11/06/2021 – Good morning faithful reader.
What do I do when I falter?
My name is Bob and my son Anthony took his own life in 2017 at the age of 35. I say this to claim my seat this morning and show a connection to a group that no one wishes to be a member of.
I guess you do what most of you saw me do yesterday, in a very public way. As you know, I have been sharing some of my posts this week with my public timeline as a way to bring awareness to parents who have lost a child to suicide. It was part of an exercise, now 7 weeks in progress, to get out of bed and fight against overwhelming grief and depression and go back to work. Primarily because my wife has been shouldering the burden financially for the past two years while I had become inert. In a very public way I shared my struggle and my journey and my only intent was to heal and possibly help others know they are not alone.
I lost that job yesterday, and I posted here of how devastated I was. So, what do I do when I falter? Well, I was faced with two very interesting choices yesterday. I could have simply gone to bed, given in to my grief, let entropy do it’s work and grieve more. Which is what I want to do, all the time. I don’t want to do it, I don’t mean to do it but that is what happens with me personally. But, I did one smart thing in my life. I let people love me even when I had no idea how to love anyone back.
So, within hours my public timeline exploded with support. Members of this group reached out to me. People from my childhood called me and my friend Gail, who you do not know but has been a steadfast believer in me since I was 17, reminded me that this was all just a dress rehearsal which I got paid for. More importantly, she reminded me I could just do it again. That is how all of this works and I hope that you find the miracle that happens here every day. The miracle of one human being reaching out to another, it really is what social media was intended to be and I am pleased that I have cultivated a small audience personally to share my life with.
I decided as I was writing this to share it to my public timeline one last time. I know people are worried and they honestly have no reason to be. I had a mentor named Gary Kent once who taught me it was important to get up off the mat and keep wrestling. He also taught me that it was important to give people you love a kick and a bear hug, of course knowing which one to use at any given time was critical. If he felt he couldn’t choose, he would just give me both.
If you are new here, I hope that you find something in one conversation today that helps you get through another day. There are people who love you, even if you don’t believe it. When nothing else makes sense and you feel like no one understands, we honestly do and we welcome you to this place that none of us ever wished to be. I do not talk about my child, but I do talk about my grief and my journey through grief. I can talk about my journey, but no I still cannot talk about my child. I am not an expert, I am just a guy trying to get through all of this every day as best as I can just like you are. I have chosen to continue to talk about my grief in the hope that I may help others, even if I only serve as a cautionary tale.
Thank you for being a part of my life, the life I am living now today. I am grateful that you are all here to walk this journey though I am truly sorry that you are.
My name is Bob, thank you for letting me share today.